Once you’ve logged into the web GUI, you’ll want to take a whack at a few important configuration steps: Change the name of the NAS; set the correct date, time, and time zone; and create a unique username and password. Start by clicking General (in the left-hand menu stack, under the System heading) and change the desired information in the large pane on the right.
Click the Password tab, type in the existing password (“freenas”), and enter your new password in the two boxes provided.
You’re now ready to prepare your hard drive. Go back to the left-hand menu and choose Management under the Disks heading. The plus sign inside the circle on the right-hand pane indicates that you can add an element to the NAS. In this case, we’re going to add a hard drive. Click the plus symbol and all the drives in your system (including the optical and USB thumb drive) will appear in the window next to the Disk heading. Be sure to choose your hard drive.
You might want to experiment with some of the options on this page (especially “hard disk standby time,” “advanced power management,” and “acoustic level”), but leave them at their default values for now. Do make sure that the value for “Preformatted file system” is set to “unformatted” before you click the Add button; then click Apply Changes.
Ready to wipe your drive? Return to the Disks heading in the left-hand column of the NAS box’s administrative options and click Format. Make sure you’re ready to proceed, as the option will erase any information previously stored on the drive. Choose your hard drive from the drop-down menu, enter a volume label, and accept the remaining default choices: “File System: UFS (GPT and Soft Updates),” “Minimum Free Space (8),” and “Don’t Erase MBR (unchecked).” Click the Format Disk button.
A drive must be mounted before it can be accessed, so go back to the left-hand Disks menu and click Mount Point. Click the circled plus sign, select Disk from the drop-down Type menu, and choose your hard drive from the drop-down Disk menu. Choose EFI GPT from the Partition menu and UFS for the File System value. Click the Add button when you’re finished. An OK message in the Status window indicates that the drive was successfully mounted.
We need to access our NAS box using computers running Windows, so it’s essential that we enable the SAMBA networking protocol on our NAS box. Look in the left-hand column for the heading labeled Services and click the CIFS/SMB menu item. Place a check mark next to Enable in the main window but leave all the values at their default settings. Click the Save and Restart button.
Now that SAMBA’s up and running, you’ll need to create one or more network shares that allow your remote computers to treat the NAS box’s hard drive(s) as though they’re a local resource. Click the Shares tab in the “Services: CIFS/SMB: Settings” window and click the circled plus button. In the screen that appears next, give the share a name, add a comment describing the purpose of the share, set the path, and click the Add button. Click the Apply Changes button on the next screen.
When you’ve finished configuring FreeNAS, click the Backup/Restore button to create a backup of your configuration. You should now be able to find your NAS and your newly created shared folders listed in Windows XP’s “My Network Places” (or Vista’s “Network”).
Now that your new NAS box is ready to go, getting all your movies and photos to stream to your media device of choice is extraordinarily easy. Here’s how you do it. Pull up your FreeNAS administrative options page and click UPnP under the Services menu. Click the Enable check box and assign a name to your device. Then select the NIC you’ll be using. Add the directories you want to share and pick a component profile that best matches your UPnP device—like your Xbox 360, for instance. Click Save and Restart, and you’ll be ready for some movie-watching!
Comments are closed on this article
soup2008
April 23, 2011 at 9:15am
I see that freeNAS has support for 3tb plus hdd, but what kind of mobo would i need, i want a build with 3tb hdds eventually
visa
October 27, 2010 at 6:00am
Running a NAS box also means that you don’t have to boot your power-leeching desktop rig every time you want to access your files from another device. Replica Watches UK
ankarada
October 06, 2010 at 1:22pm
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coxwain
July 06, 2010 at 8:16pm
Some one mentioned earlier about haveing a 4 bay NAS
I think this is where it would make sense as the 4 bay NAS systems are expensive to buy
Can we install the software on the separate hard drive rather than a USB key? and can we have a multi bay RAID or Volumed NAS?
I like the idea of building my own as I have the dlnik dns 323 and the features are very basic but missing my own customization and limited to a 2 drive bay nas.
The reason you want a NAS is that it is on all the time using theoretically less power than a full system and monitor, although the 250w PS doesnt seem to get much savings.
I read about the external brick PS for the HTPC build and it sounds very interesting and wonder how that would work?
Prez1
November 22, 2009 at 9:55pm
Thought I would share my experience following the advice in the column.
In short.. AWESOME!
This
is my FIRST time building a NAS and it went so well. I built this
mainly for use as media streaming storage for my Western Digital Live
media player. I had some old computer parts lying around and tried
this out. My system:> P4 2.4gHz
> Albatron mobo
> 3.5gig DDR memory
> 250w power supply
> TP-Link Gigabit PCI nic card
> 1TB SATA Seagate HD (so far only qty of 1 =))
> AGP Chaintec Geforce Ti4200 video card
FreeNAS
is running off of a USB micro Sandisk stick. I had NO problems at all
installing and everything went smooth throughout the process! I was
completely amazed!The media is streaming through a Belkin
F5D8234-4 N+ router, with a Trendnet TEW-624UB wireless N USB stick
attached to the Western Digital Live box.Transfer speeds from
either of my computers to the NAS box is averaging 50-60Mbps with brief beginning peaks
sometimes at 90-97Mbps which is fine by me.Thank you so much for this article!
Fuzzmaster
September 02, 2009 at 9:19pm
So I went through this whole process, but it doesn't describe how to set up the drives into a RAID array. Anyone have a walkthru for that? The freenas site is not very helpful.
kookykrazee
August 19, 2009 at 11:55am
Isn't there a way to build a NAS box, not a NAS computer? I want to have box that can handle 2-4 drives and has at least 100MB ethernet but gigabit wouldn't be bad, either.
I have seen many companies attempting to sell boxes but they require you to purchase with the drives, which is silly because they are charging 2-3x the price of the drives, if you are lucky and why would I do that when I already have the drives and would prefer to set it up myself?
sillycrazy
November 24, 2008 at 8:05am
I work in IT and understand how NAS works but I think there was a general consensus by the author that everyone reading Maximum PC has full understanding about NAS. I think this should have been made a little more clear. Based on this article (pretending I don't understand NAS) I still don't see why someone wouldn't just choose to share a folder on an existing PC in their home as already mentioned here.
What also isn't made clear... if you follow these instructions and build this NAS will the disk appear local under disk management on the system connecting to it like real SAN/NAS storage? Say for example I want to build a NAS off this article and use it purely for a large array for a media center for all the DVD rips. Will it appear as LOCAL storage?
If not how is this different from just a share on another system???
swampfox357
May 27, 2010 at 10:48am
It all depends on the protocol that you're going to use.
SAMBA/SMB shares will show up just like the typical Windows file share will. That's the whole point, it emulates CIFS.
If you use iSCSI, on the other hand, any shares are going to show up as local disks when they're mounted on the host. iSCSI would typically be used if you have the need for several local hard disks, but have no space in your tower. iSCSI is completely different from SAMBA in that each disk/partition can only be mounted on one system. If you have a 1Gb LAN connection, you probably won't even notice an access time or speed difference in disk access.
dstevens
October 05, 2008 at 10:35am
hi everybody, avid reader for almost 10 years now....
first post here ;)
isnt one of the main ideas of a NAS to use less power than a PC for hosting files over a network?
where is that being accomplished at here?
wheres the gain of doing this (Linux or free bsd or win nt or any OS at all who cares?)
when you could just host off a computer you use all the time to begin with
sitting on an external usb or seperate internal 500 gb drive?
I just dont see it....
Tekmazter
October 26, 2008 at 2:54pm
You don't understand what NAS storage is.
Sure you can run CIFS on Windows or NFS on Linux ... but think about the waste in doing that. You have to install an entire OS which runs numerous services which eat up numerous resources, which require more hardware (CPU, Memory, Video [Vista] perspectives)which requires more $$$ --get the point now? Then there's the whole OS competing for resources vs whatever is accessing your CIFS/NFS shares. Not to mention, since FreeNAS runs the bare minimum of services, you have to manage less in the way of OS specifics and just deal with what's required --managing the storage!
Also, FreeNAS can run on next to NOTHING for hardware. So, unless you're streaming hi-def vid or have 300 people leveraging the thing as a shoutcast server, this box makes a LOT of sense for utilizing some old hardware just sitting around the house.
As for Software RAID --yea I wouldn't use it either. In fact, just get yourself a decent Adaptec storage controller and go with that --avoid FRAID (F-RAID, Fake RAID) cards.
ShadesOfGrey
September 30, 2008 at 9:54am
Great SW. My FreeNAS server has been running almost 2 years with no issues.
Digital-Storm
September 26, 2008 at 8:03am
From the looks of it, some editor is a little jelous. This was posted way earlier than 8am. Why does it have a time of 11am? To push it to the top?
jwalch.hawk
September 26, 2008 at 12:05pm
It was also published in the print magazine long before this...
I've noticed a similar thing has happened with a couple of the print articles put online. My suspicion is that they notice a couple things they want to change (like formatting-wise, since you can't exactly carbon copy it from the way it appears in the magazine) after they put it up, make the changes, and then basically submit it as new again.
Jokerbomb
September 26, 2008 at 7:55am
FreeNAS is a free NAS (Network-Attached Storage) server, supporting: CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, AFP, RSYNC, iSCSI protocols, S.M.A.R.T., local user authentication, Software RAID (0,1,5) with a Full WEB configuration interface. FreeNAS takes less than 32MB once installed on Compact Flash, hard drive or USB key.
The minimal FreeBSD distribution, Web interface, PHP scripts and documentation are based on M0n0wall.Right from the site, so essentially, you're installing Linux on it.
AndyYankee17
September 28, 2008 at 4:36am
ew software raid 5, god I'd hate to have to wait for that to rebuild...
AndyYankee17
September 26, 2008 at 3:32am
sounds a hell of a lot like an ftp server. may as well install a linux server OS and run F@H on it.
dc10ten
September 26, 2008 at 1:41pm
essentually yeah, but still an idea that people may not have thought of.
and why not have an FTP server run NAS box functionality? especially when it doesn't have to cost much.
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